The fire that hit the home of one of the most important art collectors and marchands in the country, Jean Boghici, 84 years old, had at least two great losses. The paintings Samba, by Di Cavalcanti, and Floresta Tropical, by Guignard, were destroyed. But the marchand, who is Romanian and came to Brazil in 1949, astonished when he repeated, over and over with a choked voice, that the greatest loss wasn’t the works in his collection, but his cat Pretinha, who died in the flames.

“I’m very upset, but not because of the art. It’s because of my cat, who died,” he said, crying. “I don’t want to hear about the art, my cat is dead…. My greatest lost, she was already an old little cat, poor thing.”